people trashing 'all self-help' books as a meme.

What is the alternative? 'other help books?'
Or 'a getting people to help you for nothing' book?
A 'don't help yourself' book? 'how to be a fucking NEET?' 'Poor Dad, Poorer Dad'? 'How to be Socially Awkward and Claim Welfare?' 'The Welfare Slowlane?' 'How To Make $20 a month?' 'you're not OK'? 'Awaken the Lazy Faggot Within?' 'The Power of Negative Thinking?' 'How To Make Excuses & Feel Sorry For Yourself?' 

I get some of the criticisms, I get that selling feelgood stuff is an industry, that some is contradictory, that some make a career out of it, etc but so what? 

Professors make a career out of repeating the same shit for decades until a new textbook becomes the gospel of that subject (which is outdated by the time of is published, and even more so by the time students graduate) 

Musicians play the same back cataloged for years, moat fans don't even want the new shit at concerts, they want the stuff they know they like. 

Nobody says that about philosophy in the same tone, even though philosophy is largely theories, lessons learned, thought experiments, etc that is largely non-actionable. 

'it's the same old stuff recycled, etc'
All of Shakespeare looks like the same old shit, and he still sells books, people still watch the plays and movies or remake them, etc - nobody complains. I know it's literature but still. 
Hamlet is just words in a certain order. 

In every form of art, people pay to see somebody give the same or similar lecture, song, concert, talk, story, symphony, etc

Not everybody is confident or comfortable with themselves, therapy takes time and/or money, I have read many books on self-help and still do, and took a lot away from them.

A textbook may tell you the how, but not the WHY. And it is the WHY that drives us

And another thing, many books are hard to define and, yes, borrow, ideas from several subjects or disciplines, which means a lot of books could be viewed as self-help, but also some books get lumped in with that negative view - 'oh, it's another self-help book = disregard' but that does not mean they should be discounted.
Also, it can be a video, speech, presentation, audiobook, etc - some listen better than read.

Some can teach you a little on philosophy, a little on psychology, business, marketing, self-awareness, body language, social dynamics, etc

Just because it is not some subject you can major in at Harvard, doesn't mean it is useless. You can't major in nutrition there either, but it's a helpful subject. 

But the self-fulfilling prophecy of thinking you are dumb, uninformed, uncreative, lazy, ugly, you are helpless, it's somebody else's fault, whatever literally does lower your intelligence and helps nobody.

Psychologists unanimously agree that even anger, typically viewed as a negative emotion, is still more useful than despair, which achieves zero results, every single time.
Anger, correctly channeled, can achieve things.
If you are angry about, say, pollution, you're more likely to get things done about it, than someone who doesn’t see the problem, doesn’t care, or thinks the situation is hopeless, they can't help the situation or benefit themselves and/or others, etc

I realized self-sabotage is a negative trait I have, potentially a by-product of my diagnosed ADHD.
I don't take medication for it and never have, I coach myself and installed my PA as a coach.

This method was from a self-help book on ADHD. Authored by someone who suffered from it and interviewed high-functioning ADHD sufferers - CEO's etc and looked at methods they used to manage themselves.
I am way more successful because of info and methods like these.

I worked with a guy who was tall, good-looking, fit, smart, funny, stylish, etc and this was partly genetics and maybe luck, I dunno. The guy just seemed like a winner.

Funny thing was, while he was pretty good at putting on a front of confidence, without being a dick, he was very, very insecure, despite many qualifications, lots of pussy, etc. I actually thought I was insecure until I realized, via self-help, I was way more confident than him.

Turns out, while he is not 'stupid', he was capable of incredible stupidity, he had poor impulse control, would overcompensate, and is very disorganized. He was fired within a month. 

It is incredible how you can multiply things like focus, confidence and clearer thinking, and build on them, and how even a slight perceptual shift.

If you reply to this, and you claim I am deluded, then your assert that YOUR perception is reality.

If you agree then, that perception is reality, do you not also agree that perceptions can change, and so can be controlled?

So why not...deliberately CHOOSE to perceive - opportunity everywhere, for instance?

Why not consciously choose to perceive yourself acting like a boss, making money, being happy/content/successful, etc?

Which comes first? Doing it? Or visualizing it? When you go for your first job interview, and you are shown around, your pay is discussed, etc 
the only reason you show up if offered the job, is because you visualized (perhaps unconsciously) yourself successfully making sales, flipping burgers, or whatever, and making some cash. 

Before you even apply for a college course in, say, STEM, you imagined yourself in a lab in a white coat, your name in scientific journals, maybe some patents or a cushy side job on an advisory board or scientific panel.

You didn't visualize getting shit from your boss, or having no funding for research. It's a potential reality, but there is no gain from worrying about it, only learning methods for dealing with a potential setback.

I'll take books from entrepreneurs who hustled from nothing, not politicians and generals and academics.
I'll cut and paste a page of quotes maybe.
Statistics, economics, and mathematics are academic too -
Here's a statistics/economics joke -

Q - What happens when Bill Gates walks into a room full of fifty people?
A - The average net worth of everybody in the room goes up by over a billion dollars!

How does that help me? 
It doesn’t, I'd rather read a book from a Millionaire, deca-millionaire, or billionaire, hell, even a guy making a relatively $1K a month doing very little, if I can learn something from it.
I only need one nugget of information, knowledge or a mindset tool to leverage it and compound it, since I have systems in place.

>only books from an accepted epistemology are acceptable 
You wouldn't agree that this mindset, in itself, could be considered a 'pleb' mindset?
>no knowledge is useful unless peer-reviewed and approved by hierarchical systems
Really? Consider that most MBA professors teach business without ever having created a startup or even a profitable side hustle.

Would I rather listen to someone with letters after their name, who never left the school system, or someone who hustled despite lack of qualifications or an intellectual mindset?

It upsets many academics that a lot of people are successful without being smart or being self-aware of their own strengths or weaknesses, many succeed despite disadvantages, so why wouldn't a small advantage of a certain perception or developing certain habits, Learning to play to strengths, etc pay off?
It can, and it does.

I don’t think Howard Stern or Michael Flatley could explain economics, or investment principles, but both are rich.
One from dick jokes, one from Irish dancing.
There are countless examples of this.

There's a lesson there, but it's not discussed in academia, whereas it is in self-help 'type' books.

Joel Greenblatt?
>my info marketer is better than yours

>Try reading something
I read an average of 5-7 books a week, depending how busy I am.
80% is actionable advice from people who've been there and done that.
>theorists, academics, intellectuals
You excluded many fields and sub-fields within subjects, if somebody with no qualifications achieves a level of success, their success at that venture is what qualifies them, in spite of their intelligence or intellectual level. A biologist is not an expert in SEO or the elements of a well-designed website, for instance.
Expertise is domain specific. 

I read a lot of psychology, that's a scientific field, but that was being studied long before here was an established epistemology or framework. 

A Buddhist monk 1,000 years ago did not have a scientific journal or university to accredit his teachings, does that mean I should disregard him, or listen, if his work is commended?

I don't know much about Lao Tzu, or what qualifies him, but I know what I like and I like his work. 
And he if he had a profitable side business making incense, or alcohol, as many abbeys and monasteries do, I'd want that info too.

Look have you read any Foucault? He wrote about this problem with epistemology of subjects and fields often.

I don’t know Machiavelli's earnings, his profit statements, his balance sheet, so, as an entrepreneur, it's of interest, but less so.

Do I want to kiss ass and play mind games with politicians?
No.

Yes, The Prince was a good book, but I have read ebooks for -$10 written over a month by some yahoo who makes $500 a month doing something relatively easy, which has added thousands in profit because I know how to leverage that.
>dick jokes and Irish dancing are discussed in academia
No citation given?

I don't know what you mean about my mindset. My earnings increase every time I read a couple books, what's your ROI on mental masturbation with PhDs?
>keep me poor.
Nice way to jump to false conclusions.